As it turned out, five out of my last six posts have been about Chickasaw history and culture. The reason for this is that you need to understand the history of the Chickasaws to understand the history of our family. Smith Paul came to live with the Chickasaws in 1820, so by the time he accompanied them on their removal to Indian Territory in 1837 he would have been intimately familiar with Chickasaw culture. In 1844, he married my great great grandmother, Ela Teecha, a full blood Chickasaw woman, so at that point our family became an Indian family. Chickasaw history became our history and Chickasaw tradition became our tradition.
My first two posts described the Chickasaw wars with the French during the early 1700's. This is such a remarkable story that I just couldn't cram it into one post. The ability of the Chickasaws, who have always been a small tribe, to master the weapons and methods of fortification modern at the time and to prevail against a French army of superior numbers still amazes me. There have been many, including Bienville himself, who have attempted to make excuses for the French defeat, but you just have to give credit to the Chickasaws, not just for their bravery but for their organization, planning, and intelligence. They proved themselves superior in every way to the French, twice.
After these two articles about Chickasaw history I decided to begin the story of Jim's maternal heritage even though I don't know many details about the Rosser family before the time of the Civil War. "Grandpa," as my mother knew him, fled his native Georgia after the War and brought his family west to Indian Territory. He really belongs to the next generation after Smith Paul, but he was so important in Jim's life I didn't want to wait too long before introducing him.
After beginning "Grandpa's" story, I went back to the story of Smith Paul. Smith didn't chronicle his experiences during the many years he spent with the Chickasaws in their homeland, but I think we can assume that he would have become thoroughly familiar with their culture and traditions, and he would have understood the tremendous changes they were going through. To get an idea about how great these changes were you have to know where the Chickasaws had come from.
In 1820, A Time of Change for the Chickasaws I described the close knit, matriarchal society of the Chickasaws prior to their contact with the white man, a society that was rich with legends and traditions, a society that was being disrupted in 1820, when Smith Paul came to live with them.
I believe that Chickasaw clan tradition explains much of our family history, and would probably explain more if we could only talk with our ancestors. The close relation between my great grandfather with his uncle Ja-paw-nee, and between my grandfather's older brother Joe and his uncle Tecumseh fits the Chickasaw tradition of the maternal uncle taking responsibility for educating young boys. Likewise the murder of my great grandfather Sam Paul by his own son Joe goes along with the Chickasaw tradition of holding family members responsible for executing warriors who became a threat to tribal interests.
In Chickasaw Legends I tried to explain how deeply spiritual the Chickasaws were, how they believed that supernatural forces affected every aspect of their lives, and how some of these beliefs have survived into recent times.
Smith Paul was living with the Chickasaws just when their ancient beliefs were being threatened. Imagine how helpless they must have felt: their healers unable to cure the white men's diseases, their shamans unable to stop the wave of white settlers that threatened their borders. As a final blow they were being forced to move away from their ancient homeland, where all their traditions, all their mythology and legends were rooted. Grant Foreman, in his book Removal explains it this way: "More than white people they cherished a passionate attachment for the earth that held the bones of their ancestors and relatives. Few white people either understood or respected this sentiment. The trees that shaded their homes and firesides, the cooling spring that ministered to every family, friendly watercourses, familiar trails and prospects, busk grounds, and council houses were their property and their friends; these simple possessions filled their lives; their loss was cataclysmic."
In Chickasaw Life and Culture I dealt for the first time with the issue that split our family and led to the death of my great grandfather Sam Paul: the schism between the mixed blood and full blood factions within the tribe. Through the years the full bloods had withdrawn into the background, allowing the prosperous mixed bloods to take over tribal government, but when communal ownership of land, the last remnant of their ancient tribal customs became threatened, the full bloods rose up and reclaimed tribal leadership.
What comes next? The "Trail of Tears," or the forced removal of the Five Civilized Tribes to Indian Territory, now the present state of Oklahoma. This is the most significant event in the history of the Five Civilized Tribes and I've been worrying about how to deal with it, how to give it the emphasis that it deserves. What I have decided is to cover the removal of all the tribes instead of just the Chickasaws. It is really one story, a story of greed and cruelty, a story of suffering and death, a story of the end of a way of life.
Each tribe fought removal in its own way, but the tribes' struggles were all interconnected. The Chickasaw removal was actually the last of the large migrations, but while they learned from the struggles of their brothers, and used the same skills that had enabled them in the past to negotiate better conditions for themselves than the other tribes, in the end the Chickasaw migration was just as tragic as the rest.
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